Mile high club
On September 11, 2001, Nick Marson and Diane Kirschke boarded Continental Airlines flight 5 from London Gatwick to Houston, Texas. Nick, an English engineer, was heading there for work. Diane was returning home after visiting family.
It was a uneventful flight until the captain announced that they would be diverting to Gander, Newfoundland, due to an incident in the United States airspace. So begins an extraordinary love story; one of the tales to inspire hit Broadway musical Come From Away, which tells the events of the passengers and crew who found themselves there in the wake of that fateful day in history.
As terrorist attacks saw planes turned into weapons, 38 flights were diverted to the tiny town where the 10,000 residents leapt into action to take in just under 7000 stranded passengers.
“It was an amazing community,” Nick tells The Weekly today. “For several days before the Red Cross jumped into action all the food came out of their own pantries. There wasn’t a kitchen in Gander that wasn’t making meals for the people on the planes.”
Nick and Diane met as they queued for blankets. “We were both alone, we were both separated from family unlike other passengers and when we discovered that we were on the same flight it seemed reasonable to gang together,” Nick says of their initial connection. In the following days they got to know each other, taking walks, eating together and participating in organised entertainment. When the master of ceremonies at one of those events assumed they were husband and wife he jokingly offered to marry them then and there. “Why not?” Diane replied, aware of the sparks flying between the couple. By the time they finally boarded a flight five days later, she was ready for action.
“Diane at this point was a bit tearful because we were leaving,” Nick recalls. “I put my arm around her and went to kiss her on the forehead ...”
“So, I grabbed him and kissed him on the lips,” Diane interjects with delight.
Within a year the pair wed. They returned to Gander for their honeymoon.
“Here’s a good takeaway – 9/11 is about people with hatred in their hearts. 9/12 is about people with love in their hearts,” Nick says. “The world really needs this story right now.”
Come From Away opens on August 27 at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne. Visit comefromaway.com.au